Many vehicles may now be equipped with navigations systems. Vehicle navigation systems may be used to search for and calculate a route from a current location of the vehicle to a desired destination. Typical vehicle navigation systems may be configured to allow a user to enter a name or address of the desired destination. The vehicle navigation system may calculate a route from a current location of the vehicle to the desired destination and provide turn-by-turn navigation directions to the driver via text, speech, or other communications avenues. The vehicle navigation may show a map in graphical format on a display. The map may show the present location of the vehicle as the vehicle moves along a highlighted path to the desired destination. The display may also show the textual directions.
Vehicle navigation systems may allow a user to perform a search for different types of points of interests (POIs) that may be located near the current location of the vehicle. The vehicle navigation system may allow the user to locate different POIs such as nearest gas station, restaurants, parks, shopping centers and other destination types and then select one of the POIs as the destination.
In present vehicle navigation systems, when the user performs a search for different types of POIs, a list may be displayed showing POIs that match the user's search criteria. For example, if a user were to enter coffee shops, a list of coffee shops located near the vehicle may be displayed. Alternatively, or in addition to the list of POIs matching the user's search criteria, a plurality of markings and/or pins may be displayed on the map indicating the location of POIs on the map. Thus, in the above example, the map may have a plurality of pins indicating the location of the coffee shops located near the vehicle. However, limited to no information is provided about each pin. Thus, information such as the name of the POI related to each pin, address of the POI related to each pin, and other POI related data is not shown.
In present vehicle navigation systems, the vehicle location may be represented as a cursor and located in a center area of the display. In general, one cannot move the location of the cursor, as the cursor represents the current location of the vehicle. Even when the vehicle is moving, the cursor generally stays in the middle of the display and the graphical representation of the map continuously updates as the vehicle moves. Thus, if a plurality of pins is displayed on the map indicating the location of user defined POIs, the user is not able to move/scroll to the different pin locations displayed on the map.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a system and method that overcome the above identified concerns, as well as additional challenges which will become apparent from the disclosure set forth below.